The Internet and Civic Life

1) First Monday: The Digital Tea Leaves of Election 2000
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_12/lewicki/index.html
2) Institute for Policy, Democracy and the Internet
http://www.ipdi.org/publications/
3) Wired: Weapons of Mass Mobilization
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/moveon.html
4) Fact Check
http://www.factcheck.org/
5) IT Facts
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=C0_13_1
6) Pew: Internet and Democratic Debate
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/141/report_display.asp
7) Wikipedia: Political Privacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_privacy
8) How Can Democracy Be Bad?
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/street/pl38/demo.htm

After the 2000 election, these two authors predicted that Internet usage would change the way campaigns are run (1). A report posted on this website provides some examples of how the Internet was used in 2004, particularly for posting videos (2). Another feature of this year's campaign is the use of the Internet to organize grassroots activism, as is discussed in this article from Wired (3). By far the most common "political" websites, however, seek to provide information, including this website from Annenberg, (4). This recent report from Pew finds people are using the Internet for political information, and not only to seek information that reinforces their political preferences (5). One concern with this movement to Internet campaigning is that the use of cookies, online donation forms, and political mailing lists to gather information on people has implications for political privacy, an issue which is discussed generally on this website (6). This website from IT Facts (7) provides a variety of statistics on Internet use for further exploration . This final article offers some intriguing thoughts on democracy (8). [From The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2004. http://scout.wisc.edu/]